Dawn of War - Dark Crusade: Necron Reassemble

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The wily Necron just won't stay down.

By Johnny Ebbert - Lead Designer, Relic

Today we'll be talking about the Necron's ability to reassemble their dead units. After you're finished reading, be sure to 802065/vids_1.html" target="_new">check out the video vignette in the video section.

For those of you that have just now joined us, the Necrons are one of the two new races we're featuring in Dark Crusade. The Necrons are a race of metallic skeletons that are hell-bent on enslaving the galaxy. They actually succeeded once in the distant past, but were overthrown by the younger races. They've been lying in tombs all over the galaxy for millions of years, waiting for their revenge. The time has finally come to put the galaxy back under their iron yoke, and you the player will get to crush the galaxy in their name.

We've already discussed how Necron units often get back up to rejoin the battle after they're killed. Don't assume a Necron unit is finished just because you see him collapse into a heap of parts on the battlefield. You'll often see the individual parts crawling towards each other and pulling themselves back together.

But even when you damage a Necron unit to the point where it can't get back up, the Necrons have a unit that can bring these dead units back into the battle. This unit is called the Tomb Spyder.

The Tomb Spyder is a melee vehicle that can do serious damage in its own right. But the Tomb Spyder also has the ability to gather the individual parts of destroyed Necrons, and reassemble them into functional units.

The cool thing about this ability is that you can spawn several types of squads, but each type of squad requires a different amount of parts. If you're desperate for manpower, you only need a few parts to spawn a squad of Necron Warriors. But if you wait to get more parts, you can spawn a squad of Flayed Ones, or a even a squad of Immortals.

If you watch the video at the bottom of the page, you'll see a battle between a large group of Space Marines and some Necron Warriors. The Space Marines seem to have the fight well in hand and the Necron Warriors are quickly starting to dwindle.

But you'll notice that there are two Tomb Spyders behind the battle gathering the parts of destroyed Necrons. As soon as they have enough parts, they spawn a new squad of Necron Warriors.

The tide of the battle quickly starts to swing the other way as more Necron Warriors are reassembled and rejoin the fight, and the Space Marines start to realize how much trouble they're in just as the camera fades to black.